Indigo: Abraham, Emotion Vol. 4: Covenant, Chapter Eighteen: "Covenant part 3 Grace, the Divine, and the End"

Chapter Eighteen: Covenant part 3 Grace, the Divine, and the End

 

Shana couldn’t move.  She dropped the covenant and collapsed to the ground beside it.  There, she sat panting even while Alex approached.  She watched, wide-eyed and weak, as Alex and Abel traded words.  Then, she watched, impotent and frightened as a child, as they came to blows.  It happened instantly, Alex’s wide lunge missing entirely and her back exploding after.  Blood and bone poured from the wound.  Motionless and taut, time froze in a tense silence.  Abel withdrew, his spear head receding like a storm cloud.  Alex jerked forward and, without the support, fell.

The silence lifted, and Shana screamed.  She screamed shrill and high, and though she could feel it raw in her throat, she could hardly believe it was her own voice.  Outside of her body, she watched herself claw at the dust and willed her legs to move but couldn’t.  Locked in place, she watched Alex fall, revealing Abel and his blood-stained spear to full view.

Alex lay motionless, her body becoming a bloody smear of limbs and little else.  She didn’t even breathe.  Her eyes were glassy and pale, turned toward the dust, unmoving, unblinking as Abel stepped over her.

Ellen stood to meet him.  She stepped forward, and Shana’s vision was obscured by long legs and thin arms.  Though she looked in better health than the others around her, Ellen was still pale.  She extended her arms and stood before Abel, rooted like a tree.  To Shana, she looked more like a child staring down a tornado.

Abel stopped and angled his spear up and toward her.  The blood gathering at the tip reversed and left a thin red line across his fingers.  “Move,” he said.

Ellen glared back at him.  “No.  I don’t really understand any of this, but I know one thing: I won’t let you take her.”

“Fine.”  He moved again, and it was as fluid as before.  From standing, Abel put all of himself into the thrust.  His spear was a precise, deadly flash of liquid red and gleaming silver.

Shana’s spine tickled.  A voice whispered into her ear.  Sad, anxious, and urgent, it reminded her of how Alex died and begged her to intervene.  Shana agreed, and this time she moved, too.  Heart’s Song appeared in her hand and, spinning, she caught Abel’s spearhead and knocked it off course.  Her arms ached.  Hitting his spear was, in her mind, the equivalent of hitting a semi with a baseball bat, but she managed to knock his thrust off by just under a foot.

Abel hardly seemed to notice.  He simply continued his movement, spiraling around and lunging again.

 

: Covenant :

 

Isaac waited until Crest’s body was gone, watching it fade into the twilight until nothing was left of it, not even the shadows.  He had hoped that it would give him some comfort, but Crest’s passing left him with nothing more than a growing hole in his heart.  What hurt most was how much easier it had been to kill a second time.

He started toward the cliffs, toward where Abel’s overwhelming presence loomed.  Within the maelstrom of power, he could feel the tiny specks, the droplets of strength tossed about by the storm that raged around them.  He could feel Ellen within that, an absence of power, utterly normal and without safety.  He could feel his mother as well, still guarded but with the door to her heart now opened a fraction more than it once had been.

The canyon wall was flat and high.  Ignoring his fatigue, Isaac gathered his breath and started the climb up.  He used his chakrams, stabbing their bladed edges into the sheer surface and used his feet to hold him in place.  His arms ached, but he pulled himself up a few feet at a time.

The raging battle above him escalated.  Two powers clashed and one was swallowed and snuffed.  Adrenaline pushed him through his fatigue and drove him higher through his exhaustion.  With a final grunt, he lifted himself up onto the flatten crest of the canyon’s crown.  He arrived to find Abel, a giant of a man, bearing down upon a voluptuous blonde he did not recognize, who stood between Abel and his intended target, Ellen.  Deidra and Cornelius watched from the side, looking impotent before Abel’s undeniable might.

Abel moved more quickly than Isaac could follow.  His Voice howled, splitting the wind with each thrust.  Isaac, without time to hesitate, poured himself into his Voice and threw, shouting the words which came to him from his heart.

Sun rising red, a screaming soul of fire burning the sky!

His chakram flashed with red flame and sparked on contact with Abel’s spear.  It hit with enough force to deter the next incoming thrust before spiraling off and embedding itself into the ground.  The tension in the air eased and everyone fixed their gazes on Isaac’s entry.  Abel eyes were hollow without whatever he poured into Crest to give them light. 

Ellen, on the other hand, brightened at his appearance. “Isaac!”  She allowed a small, tired smile to blossom on her face. 

The woman before her chanced only a glance but didn’t linger.  She instead lifted her hammer and planted her feet in front of Ellen.  “Now it’s four on one!  If we work together, we can take him!” As she spoke, she stepped in toward him, swinging hard and bringing her hammer around toward Abel’s head.  He sidestepped before the blow could land and lunged as he retreated.

The attack was interrupted.  Cornelius intercepted, planting his feet and swinging for Abel’s torso.  Abel had to respond quickly to block the attack, twirling his spear around and using the dark wooden shaft to catch Cornelius’ blade.  Time froze with their weapons locked as everyone held their breath, and then Abel gave a gentle shove and sent Cornelius stumbling.

And thus He spoke, and the weight of His words shall crush you.

Shana closed distance and attacked from the side.  The front of her Voice shined like the dawn.  She meant to knock Abel’s head clean from his shoulders, but her swing was slow and far too wide.  Abel ducked under and aimed his spear at her abdomen as he stood.

The spearpoint stopped inches away from her flesh, the air screeching around it like steel on steel.  Deidra stood, arms raised, wincing and shaking under the strain of her barrier.  Isaac, seeing the distraction, recalled his chakram and staggered forward.  The battle below and the climb after had worn him thin.  Even with the adrenaline pounding in his temples, he felt slow and struggled for breath.  Gathering his strength, he heaved a chakram at Abel’s throat to end it quickly but missed.

As Isaac’s chakram sailed by, Abel tilted his head and allowed another attack from Cornelius to pass with similar ease.  Momentum carried Cornelius forward, into Abel’s reach.  Abel grabbed him by the arm and tossed him away, spiraling around and between Ellen and Shana and toward Abraham behind them.  Shana followed him, but he stopped hard and caught her with his shoulder. 

The force of their contact knocked Shana’s feet from under her and Abel, using his spear like a catapult, jettisoned her toward the edge of the cliff.  Shana sailed and landed, sliding to a stop with little more than a thin trail of pebbles and dust between her and the canyon floor.  Ellen, meanwhile, put herself back in his path and regretted it.  With no one else between them, she watched Abel’s approach in slow motion, his eyes empty and unfeeling, stopping suddenly only inches from her, a slight shimmer surrounding his body.

Abel grunted and shook before giving a brief glance around. He found Deidra nearby, hands raised and body shining with sweat.  With a concentrated frown, Abel forced his foot forward and the light around him faded.  Deidra fell forward, her barrier was shattered.  He couldn’t move far before Shana returned, leaping toward Abel with her hammer overhead.  This time, he caught her Voice by the haft with his open palm and held her in suspended in the air.  Angling his spearpoint up, he thrust, and the air wailed as his Voice slid off another invisible wall.  Deidra cringed and vomited.

Looking now toward Deidra, Abel tossed Shana aside and returned his attention to Ellen, who now held the covenant and protected it with her body.  He stopped at her side and towered over her as a mountain does an ant.  His Voice gleamed with the remains of Alex’s blood as he stared at her and through her, to the covenant that consumed his focus.  She was nothing to him at this point, not even a corpse.  He lifted his weapon, and he prepared to kill.

 

: Covenant :

 

Wherever Alex went after she died, she wasn’t unhappy.  She felt no pain there, nor hurt, nor sadness, nor loss of any kind.  In fact, she eventually came to realize that she felt nothing at all.  An infinite nothingness surrounded her, a waiting void gaping just beyond her reach with no sense of urgency to reach it.  The void breathed around her in its nothingness, passing in and out of her and through her like the tide.

            Things echoed in the nothingness, reverberating along the void.  They took shape and became the likeness of her, and she became them.  Alex then realized how limited the human perception is, fragmented by sense and experience.  In death, however, she saw the undiluted truth.  Everything was connected, vast, and multifaceted.  This understanding was wasted on her, though, if for no other reason than her being dead.

            “Alex!”  A thought echoed through the void, seeking her.  She felt it, became it, and acknowledged it.

            “Abraham.”  Alex gave this thought form, not by her own will, but by what lingered of her will.  A spark which simply refused to be snuffed.  From nothing, Abraham’s tiny body appeared, wrapped in all colors and also in none of them.  She seemed smaller now, smaller than even before, to the point of being microscopic.  Despite this, Alex could see every aspect of her in fine detail, seeing things now that she didn’t know existed, and she experienced them, also, and she became them, too.

            “You’re dead, Alex.”

            “I know, but that’s fine.  I’ve died before.  What are you, by the way, with all of those colors inside of you?”

            “It’s different this time.  This time, I don’t know that I can save you.”  Every word Abraham spoke gave birth to new things.  Colors formed from the ether, appearing as sounds and tastes both new and unfamiliar.  She seemed somehow guilty, though Alex didn’t understand why.  “Last time, when you were dying in the material realm, I rescued you and pulled you into the Emotion.  Pulling your physical body into a meta-physical plane of existence allowed your soul to draw on the ambient energy of the world around you and heal you.  It used the spiritual energy here in the atmosphere to mend your physical wounds and accelerate your recovery.”

            “I see,” Alex said, and she did.  She saw everything in her enlightenment.  More than that, she understood, too.

            “But these wounds weren’t aren’t just physical.  Your soul has suffered considerable trauma.  That is how it works, in the Emotion.  By being here in between, the damage done to you is similarly two-fold, and this time it might be fatal, because Abel didn’t simply stab your body.  He impaled your soul.”

            If Alex had shoulders, then she would have shrugged.  Her life seemed very far away from her, being less than a grain of sand on the beaches of reality.  By that point, she was hardly even a thought, and she was becoming less with each passing second.  Then, she remembered Shana, and she lingered.  “How are the others?”

            “They are unwell.  By this point, Abel is a monster, hollow and entirely without mercy.  He has no humility, no pride, nothing at all to make him human.”

            “Sounds dead, too.”

            “He is less than that, even, empty in his body and his soul.  He did it so that he could accept me, and he will go through all of them to get to me, if he has to.”

 

: Covenant :

 

            Ellen stood, arms out and eyes forward, her body between Abel and Abraham.  He approached her slowly and without emotion.  Ellen screamed, “I won’t let you take her!”  She tried hard to keep from shaking and failed.  Alex already died in front of her, and the others were struggling to keep pace with him.

            Abel took a step and led with his lance.  Each movement was a blur, but before the blow could land, Isaac appeared in front of her.  He winced in anticipated pain but instead heard the crack of spiritual steel against solid air.  Warmth spread across his back.  He opened his eyes and found Ellen, buried into his shoulder, shaking as she stared ahead.  She had gone pale and stiff.

            She whispered his name as he turned.  Deidra had put herself before him, her body curled forward with broken bone and fresh blood forced from her back by the intrusion of Abel’s spear.  The spearhead jutted well beyond Deidra’s broken body.  The air in front of her shimmered, and she held the shaft of his weapon tight with her bloody hands.  Abel tugged his weapon from her, and she fell backward into Isaac’s waiting arms.  They fell together, Isaac landing on his knees.

            “Why,” he whispered, holding her around the shoulders, forgoing any attempt to save her.  She was gone.  It would be a struggle even to breathe.  He clutched her even more tightly.  “Why would you do that?”

            Deidra smiled and touched his face, her fingers leaving bloody lines across his cheek.  “My shield wouldn’t hold.  I knew that, and I,” she coughed, hard, wet, fatally, “Children shouldn’t die first.”  Then, sadly, as an apology, she said, “I love you, Isaac.”

            “After everything you did, after leaving me alone with him.”  He hugged her, cradling her corpse.  “Now, you’re leaving me again.”

            Nearby, Cornelius screamed and charged Abel with his blade up and gleaming in the twilight.  Isaac watched them meet, and a single, short lunge ended it all.  Abel caught Cornelius in the face with his spearpoint and pinned him to the earth.  His head went one way, his body the other.  Then, Abel turned to them, covered in blood, expressionless.  “We are done now,” he said, and he took another step forward.

            This time Shana intercepted him, jaw tight and Voice ready.  Like Alex before her, she was now willing to give her life to save Abraham.

 

: Covenant :

 

            “I am sorry, Alex, but I need to ask you for another favor.”

            Abraham spoke with urgency, and Alex could feel it in her words. “Okay.”

            “At this rate it might be impossible to save you, but I can send you back for a time, and when I do, I need you to deliver a message for me.  Tell them to stop, to give me over to Abel.”

            Alex listened without judgement, save for a small part of her still tethered to her body.  This will be her way back, when Abraham is ready to send her, but it is also what caused her to hesitate.  This small part of her recoiled at the thought of surrendering to the man who killed her.  “Why,” she asked, “They’re fighting for you.  To protect you.”

            “They’re dying to protect me, and they’re dying for no reason.  I came to you because I was afraid of what Abel was, not of what he has become.  I am so much more than him, and I am sorry I ever burdened you to begin with.  Someday, maybe, you’ll understand what I mean, but a man is far more frightening when they care.  What he is now is nothing to me.  For now, even if you don’t understand, I need you to trust me.”

            Alex did understand, and she understood also that she wouldn’t always understand.  For then, she could see Abraham, the true Abraham, and knew that she was so much more than a little, frightened girl.  She was life, and she was the long shadow life cast.  In the afterlife, Alex realized, everything was so stark, simple, and clear.  It was attachment that warped perceptions, and perception warped everything else around it.

            “Okay,” Alex said, and she could feel Abraham’s joy.  It shined in the void.

            “Thank you, Alex, and thank you for everything you’ve done for me.  Everything you’ve sacrificed.  I am so sorry that it ever came to this.”

            “Don’t be.  I’m not.  It gave me something to live for.”

 

: Covenant :

 

            Abel stood with his lance ready, poised to strike.  The battle was already over.  Shana wasn’t even an obstacle between him and his goal.  She was nothing more than another body.  Isaac, the strongest of those remaining, was crouched beside him, holding his mother’s corpse and looking pale and weak.

            The blood on his spear pooled at the tip and fell.  He watched it with expressionless fascination and spoke without emotion or investment.  “In all this protest, this is what you achieve.  Failure and death.  I do not wish to kill you, or the Lady, and but I will have her.  I will change it, change everything, and become the god needed to set things right.”  His flat tone added weight to his words, but it lacked the conviction of a man who believes.  He looked at her, his eyes empty like the air.  “I will be a god who understands humanity.  Trust me.”

            Shana stared back at him, her disgust showing in the tightening of her brow and the grimace of her face.  “Trust you,” she said, her voice shaking.  “Trust you?  To be human?  Please!  You don’t have anything even remotely human left in you.  You’re empty, stuck here in your own little kingdom, plotting and planning and killing anyone in your way.  No. I won’t trust you, and I won’t let you become a god, because you’d be terrible at it.” Shana lifted her Voice, her knuckles white from holding to it so tightly.  Standing before him was a struggle.  Fighting him was a literal fight for her life.  It was hard to be brave in the face of death, but Alex’s memory demanded it.  She kept her feet planted.  “She would never forgive me if I gave up now.”

            “I will remove you.”

            “Go ahead and try.”

            That was when what remained of Alex coughed and rolled onto its back.  Choking, it sputtered until blood bubbled and ran out of its open mouth.  Its hair grew dark with old blood which had pooled beneath it, sticking the dirt to its scalp.  Shana paused, looking past Abel to Alex’s breathing corpse.  Color was returning to it.  Shana wanted to thank God and all of His angels, but it didn’t seem right.  She wasn’t ready to believe it was real.  She hazarded a hesitant, “Alex?”

            Ellen touched Shana’s shoulder and recoiled when she flinched.  “Go to her,” she whispered, and Shana looked back, nodded, and bounded away.  Ellen took her place, standing between Abel and the covenant as a human shield.  She knew that she couldn’t stop him for long, or at all, but she felt better about dying than doing nothing.

            Shana kneeled at Alex’s side and lifted her bloody head.  Alex’s flesh remained cold and pale, but there was warmth returning to her.  Alex’s eyes were slightly foggy.  Shana hugged her tight.  “Alex? Alex!  Please, tell me you’re alive.  Please!”

            Alex wheezed.  “Sort of.  Not much time.  Listen.  Tell Ellen.  Tell her to let go.  To give up Abraham.”

            Shana stammered, struggled for thought.  Everything had happened so quickly that the events were running together, smearing into a contradictory blur.  Tears ran down her cheeks as cold blood gathered in her palms.  “What? Alex, no.  What are you saying? Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve fought for to this point…Do you know what you’re saying?”

            “Yes.  I understand it all.  I can see.  Clearly.  Abraham.  She’s so much.  More than we understand.  It’s what she wants.  Trust her.”

            Shana looked up from Alex, to the waiting Ellen.  Abel watched.  They both did.  They could hear everything, and everyone was suspended in space, waiting to see what Alex would say next and what Ellen would do.  Shana fixed her eyes on the covenant.  “Alex, are you sure about this?”

            “She is.  I trust her.  You should, too.”

            Shana sighed.  “Okay,” she said, and she heard a faint breath and felt Alex go.  She set her to rest and closed her eyes.  When she looked up, she wiped her tears and found Abel waiting.  Ellen stood her ground.  She was crying now, too.

            “No.  I won’t back down.  This is a trick.  I don’t believe this.”

            Isaac frowned from where he squatted and set his mother’s body into the dust.  He stood beside Ellen and pulled her close.  She flailed and scratched against him, and he held her still until she fell, crying, into his chest.  He gave Abel a glassy-eyed stare that seemed out of place on him and said, “Just do it.”

            Abel watched, monetarily, and then nodded.  He willed his Voice away and made his approach.  Before the covenant, the red light it gave off casting dark shadows across his face, he pressed his palm to its smooth, shining surface.  It was warm to the touch and pulsed.  The light grew faintly, at first, and then shined.  The covenant slid open, light spilling now from its exposed innards, a bloody, blinding light.

            The covenant parted like fruit, and Abraham rose from within.  She stood, wet and naked, her childish body changing on contact with the air.  She grew tall and old, becoming a woman, perhaps even a mother, in the space of a breath.  Her hips blossomed.  Her skin gleamed.  Her figure was round and soft, and she radiated patient warmth and divine grace.

            Impossibly, she touched Ellen’s shoulder and whispered to her.  “It will be okay.”  Then, she turned to Abel and cupped his cheeks.  The air around her shifted, spiraling and twisting, catching her hair and making it dance like a crow’s feather caught on the wind.  “Everything will be okay.”

            Abel changed, too.  His eyes went dark and wide as everything rushed back to him.  Emotions washed over him like a torrential rain.  Confusion, hurt, surprise, anger, solitude, and loss, each sprang through him and swelled within him.  He felt each one acutely, and most of all, he felt.  Leaning forward, Abraham placed a single kissed upon his forehead, and he screamed.

            Light filled him.  It filled his skin, and his eyes, and his mind.  Since coming to the Emotion, his every thought was how to control her.  Only now, when he came to this point, did he realize that she was beyond control.  In his tempestuous emotions, he conjured his Voice and plunged it into her.  The earth splintered under his weight, the stones parting from his sheer force of will.  Abraham, however, remained unharmed.

            She replaced her lips with a single pale finger and brought him to his knees.  Kneeling with him, she hugged him, and Abel cried like a child into her bosom as he screamed.  “No. No!  NO!”  He repeated it as his mantra, and she shushed him patiently until he fell into a silence.  Once he was calmed, she smoothed his hair and soothed him.

            “Don’t you worry, darling.  Everything will be okay.  I understand you’re confused, and you’re frightened, and you’re so very ephemeral.  And I know you’re guilty, too, but I forgive you.” 

When she said that, it was all over.

 

: Covenant :

 

Again, Alex receded into her shapeless, formless self.  Warmth faded, and the light went with it.  Then, they returned.  Like the tide coming in, warmth and light seeped into her in slow pulses.  Her anxieties, her concerns, her happiness, her friendship, it all faded in and out.  She floated in the nothingness, but she could feel it all at the very edge of her perception.

She could feel Abraham, too, a tangible thing formed from the nothingness.  A dark curtain of hair obscured Abraham pale form.  She was a child again, but she moved with the poise of an adult.  Her eyes were large and dark, sparkling with the cosmos inside of them.  She smiled at Alex, and she spoke with all the gravity and weight of a world.  “Thank you, Alex.  Thank you so much.  You have done well.”

They hugged, formless and fully formed.  Alex felt the warmth again, and it was then that Alex realized the warmth she felt was Abraham surrounding her.  She realized also that Abraham smelled of flowers, and that reminded her of Alicia, and it made her smile.  “What happened to him after he opened the covenant?”

“He got what he wanted,” Abraham said, cradling Alex in her arms and in her heart.  “What he really wanted, I mean.  He had been confused for a long time, and hurt, too, but I set him on the right path.  Sometimes, people just need to be shown another path.”

“How did you do it?”

“I opened his heart, returned his emotions to him, and sent him on his way.”

“Sent him on his way?”

“Yes.”  Abraham ran her fingers through Alex’s hair.  Though she was smaller than Alex, she seemed more the adult between them. Abraham was safe and serene, and Alex wondered briefly if they were in heaven.  Abraham continued, “I returned him to where he began, to where we all began.”

“So, he died?”

Abraham laughed.  “Nothing dies, Alex.  It all just passes.”  She smiled.  “You should know that by now.”

Alex didn’t know, and she didn’t understand the distinction between the two, either.  Earlier she would have, she thought, and but her return to her body had left her feelings disorganized and her mind cluttered by sensation.  Everything that had made so much sense to her before seemed so far beyond her comprehension.  Even trying to remember how that felt, though, was more than she could handle, so she decided to let it go.  She turned her mind toward other things.  “And what about Shana? Did she pass, too? Where is she now?”

“No.  She went back to the physical world, where she belongs.  You should be there, too.”

“But, I thought I…”

Abraham put a finger to Alex’s lips.  “Thank you, Alex, for helping me.  And for being my friend.”  Then, Abraham released Alex to drift.  They floated together, watching each other, feeling each other.  Then, taking Alex’s cheeks, Abraham kissed her forehead and shoved her away.  They parted like ships at sea.

 

: Covenant :

 

The sheets were softer than Alex remembered, and the air in the room was crisp and cool.  Ellen kept it that way, needing the hum of the air conditioner to lull her to sleep at night.  Light slipped in through the slats of the blinds, adding a soft glow to the room’s interior.  Alex rolled onto her stomach, stretched, and thought that she could stand to miss her morning class.

Then, she jerked up, head-first, into the ceiling and gave a curse.  “What the hell?”  She winced, holding her head as she curled into a ball.  It hurt, and she felt every throbbing jolt.  She went wide-eyed.  “Wait.  I feel?”  Alex lifted her top, felt around her sternum, and found a long, thin scar where Abel had pierced her.  She released a sigh, brows knitted.

Next, she rolled onto her side to examine the dorm room.  It was both foreign and familiar.  She was alone in the early morning, lying in her bunk.  The wall hadn’t been exploded out across the field, nor were there any signs of damage or reconstruction.  Her body, she found upon closer examination, was largely whole and entirely unchanged, save for that single scar and the lingering memories.

She slid from the bed and pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms.  Every part of her ached, like she had been sleeping for a week.  She attempted to stretch out the kinks and found only moderate success.  Outside, the halls were empty, as was the commons.  Her feet were cold against the slick, glossy tiles.  It was the weekend, she reasoned, as there were too few people there for it to be a weekday.  She went to the front door and found Ellen and Isaac outside at the smoking benches.  Isaac appeared to be crying while Ellen comforted him.

“Oh, you’re up.  Good.  I was feeling kind of weird just walking around on my own.”

Alex turned to find Shana there.  Like Alex, Shana was unharmed and showing no sign of adventure, except for the careful way in which she carried herself.  Alex hugged her on sight, grateful for the warmth of her touch and the smell of her skin.  Shana hugged her back, and they held each other’s arms after the embrace ended.

“So, it was all a dream,” Alex said, though her scar contradicted that.  Shana led her to the couch, and Alex settled beside her.

“You think so? I don’t know.  I just feel like, in my heart, it was real.”

Alex stared at the far wall in deep thought and decided Shana was right.  All of it was confused in her head, but all of it was there.  She knew, in her heart, she could trust her body and her mind, and she knew also that she could trust Shana, too.  The battles, the Emotion, her death, it had all happened.  She lifted her right hand and, if she stared long enough, could almost see Three Gods there, wrapped around her wrist.

“We all woke up together in your dorm room,” Shana said.  “Isaac was with us, too, but he left early and only just came back.  He and Ellen have been outside ever since.  I think something happened.”  She glanced at them through the window.  “Oh, and we checked the date while you were sleeping, and it’s only a few days before all of us were sent to the Emotion.”

“The a few days before?”

“Yeah.  Before he left, Isaac told Ellen that something similar had happened to him when he left the Emotion for a little bit, except he was sent even farther back, but I don’t think it’s exactly the same.”  Shana stretched her arms overhead and then sighed.  “Also, Isaac’s mom, well, she,” Shana picked at her fingernails as she spoke, “It seems like the people who died in the Emotion, well, they stay dead.”

Alex stared at the far wall still, and she thought of the scar under her shirt.  She wondered what Abraham did and how she did it.  Then, her mind caught up to the conversation, and her eyes went wide.  She jumped up from the couch and sprinted down the hall to Carolyne’s room.

 

: Covenant :

 

Three hours later, Alex and Shana joined Ellen and Isaac outside.  Together, the four of them watched the paramedics haul off the body.  Shana wore one of Alex’s long sweaters to keep the cold Spring air from nipping at her skin.  It fit her like a dress.  The police stayed only a moment longer.  Alex had answered all of their questions absently, as if passing through a dream.  They told her that they may contact her again, but that it seemed unlikely.  She stared at the dorm with blank acceptance, feeling but not letting herself be overwhelmed by the feelings.

Silence ruled, interrupted only by the stirring of the trees.  Isaac had calmed and now stared like Alex.  His eyes were red, and he seemed tired. Ellen held his hand.  Shana held Alex.

“So,” Ellen said after some time, “Carolyne is?”

“She passed in her sleep,” Alex said.  “The paramedics said they couldn’t determine the cause.  The coroner will have to figure it out.”  Alex squeezed Shana’s hand.  “But we know.”

“It’s all connected,” Isaac said.  His voice was rough and distant, lacking his usual energy.  “Our bodies, our souls, and our spirit.  If one goes, then the others just…”  He brought his hands together, knitting the fingers into a weave.  Then, he pulled them apart.  “Whatever is left just withers.”

Alex opened her mouth to speak.  She paused, licked her lips, and swallowed.  “Then how come I survived?”

Isaac looked at her.  So did everyone else.  His gaze was tired.  To her, he seemed older.  “I’m not sure.  From what I saw, I would have thought you would be gone.”

“You survived because you have something to live for,” Shana said, and she held Alex even tighter.

Alex laughed warily.  “I guess I do, even if I don’t know what that is right now.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Shana said.  “And that, by itself, is enough for now.”